panerai153

Great watch. I'm tempted, but too many watches plus a new project just starting,soooo I pass.

I agree it is a beautiful watch. The only teeny criticism is the insert. You have a watch with a pristine dial,hands, crystal and case, yet the insert looks like it's been through the wars. Were me, I would try to find a bezel insert that isn't broken, and then install a tritium pearl. It's just me, but i don't particularly like subs,SD's with no pearl, just makes the watch look incomplete. In my case, I would either snag the broken insert on something and rip it off, or it would get full of dust and trash through the hole and freeze up the bezel.

Nah!! What he really needs is a 16750, early version without the white gold surrounds on the dial plots. Would be identical to the 1675 but with a better movement and quickset. I can't match your photo sinnce its 98 degrees here and mine is a later 16750 anyway. I really do like your 1675, and he would be getting a great watch with either model.

Great work. Love the 1675's. i like that you made the GMT hand non adjustable like the gen 1675's. Thanks for the write up and the photos.

You're right. Most of the burglaries in our area are theft by opportunity. Mostly breaking into unlocked cars, ripping off purses, CD's, Sunglasses.,etc. One of the disadvantages of living in a small town/rural area is we all tend to develop a "Mayberry" attitude. It's a wonderful place, everyone loves everyone else, no crime, etc. Well of course that was before Meth, Crack, Cocaine, and a vast array of ill gotten prescription drugs. Now about 99% of the crime is committed by a small minority of people who are just looking for the next fix.The good thing for those that take precautions, the opportunistic thief is going to pass up the house with a lot of lights, dogs, Alarm co. signs, etc. There are just too many other houses around with unlocked doors, things left outside, easy pickings for a snatch and run thief. If on the other hand, you get hit by a real professional, none of the above is going to be a real deterrent. Lucky for us, we don't have enough of the things that a professional would want, I hope!!

" In the case of small homage companies such as MKII, then there is a better chance that a TC might equal or exceed them - their resources are going to be far closer to those of a Chinese rep factory. I fact, I believe that some small watch makers outsource their manufacture to China - so they might even be made in the same factories as reps!" I don't think the QC of any of the rep factories approach that of watch companies like MKII ,Ocean 7 or a lot of the smaller shops. First off Bill Yao not only inspects every watch he gets back from Switzerland, and by the way, to have the Swiss on the dial, they do have to comply with the Swiss watch industry rules. When MKII was shipping the Kingston's, there were a lot of unhappy folks, primarily because it was taking so long to get the watches out. Every watch went through the same meticulous process, every watch was pressure tested using a "Dry" tester to the stated depth on the dial, and every watch was tested in 3 positions for accuracy. There may well be some smaller watch companies that are using parts from China, but even at that they have much better QC. The biggest difference is what you posted in your post above. The Chinese reps are made by unknown folks in unknown factories. you have very little recourse should something go wrong. Any branded watch is going to have a warranty, a contact source and someone who can take care of your problems should one arise, not necressarily so with reps, and if you don't believe it, read some of the myriad of problem posts on the various forums, written by people who got a broken watch, parts missing, screws stripped, etc. Quite often they were less than satisfied with hte customer service offerd by the dealer. Don't get me wrong, problems happen with the best. I remember a story several years ago on the Omega forum on WUS. a felow went into an Omega AD bought a brand new Omega, wore it home, and the watch stopped less than 24 hours after purchase. the fellow goes back to the AD a couple of days later, shows the watch to the sales person who asked him if he had dropped the watch? No, started acting funny a few hours after I got home, took it off and haven't put it on since. Salesman got their watchmaker to take a look, removed the caseback, couldn't see anything wrong from just a cursory exam, told the customer "we'll have to send your watch back to Bienne, have one of the factory watchmakers have look at it. How long the customer asked? Oh, probably about 3-4 months!! Customer told the manager he wanted a replacement watch or his money back. manager told him, that would be impossible as it's now a used watch. Horror story, you bet. That guy would never buy another Omega, or deal with that store, and you can bet the story got told a thousand times. So bad things can happen with the best and the worst. That horror story aside, I do think you will stand a better chance of getting good customer service from one of the branded watches. Just for comparison, here is a little pictorial "Prebuilt, what the Hell takes so long" it shows the steps that a MKII Kingston goes through from the bare case to a watch ready to ship. http://www.mkiiwatches.com/2011/11/pre-built-watches-aka-what-the-hll-takes-so-long/ I have had really good luck with my reps, by and large. However I usually factor in a movement service as part of the price if it's a watch i plan to keep for any length of time. a good watchmaker can head off a lot of potential problems with a thorough inspection and service.

Well done, and thanks for your selfless dedication to our little community

I have mine in a safe. I believe that if you make it very difficult and inconvenient thieves will move on to something easier. First off,I live out in a country subdivision, houses are on 5 to 20 acre plots. one very narrow road in and out. About 20 places where parking a sheriff's car would completely block escape, couple of big mean dogs, plus a little mean yippy dog inside. Safe is in a narrow closet, lag bolted through the floor directly into floor joists. Not enough room to get a pry bar inside the closet to tear the safe up from the floor, plus pretty hard to concentrate with all the dogs barking. Best of all a very nosy and suspicious neibor who will call the Sheriff's office if something doesn't look right. Insurance on the genuine watches and wife's jewelry as well.Insurance is mainly to cover loss or theft when we travel, as well as possible loss in a fire. A safe is a good thing not only for your valuable watches, jewelry, but most are fireproof to some extent, and it's a good place to store documents that you don't want to lose. When we go out of town for business or vacation, I even stick my backup hard drive in the safe. How many of us have all our financial records (Quicken,Quickbooks), word documents, etc on a computer that would be a pile of melted plastic and metal if it went through a fire? So far so good!!

Beautiful !! Can't beat gilt!!

Good Luck

I agree with the idea of buying the gen. Phong's are around 900-950 USD. His are good, no doubt, they are as close to the real deal as you can get, but they aren't. They are still and expensive rep. If all you have is 1k to spend, and it's eating a hole in your jeans pocket, then I would say phong would be a good choice. If on the other hand, you can put off the purchase and save some money, you can pick up a nice 9411/0 for 2 1/2 times the price of the phong. With the gen, if you take care of it, you can sell it on later and not lose any money on the deal, whereas with the phong, you are going to take a hit if you decide to sell it later.

You need to look at the MKII Tornek Rayville. Bill Yao bought all the TR rights, including the name. He produced a very limited edition of 15 Tornek Rayville T-1000's. Rumor is there will be more in the future. If you like the old Blancpains, this one is really,really close.

The 16710 is a very nice watch, it was the first in the Rolex GMT series that has the settable hour hand. Very nice if you are traveling, as you can leave the GMT hand as your home time and reset the hour hand for your destination time zone. The disadvantage of the 16710 movement is the quickset date feature was lost when they went to the new movement in the 16710. That may not be a big deal to you if you wear the watch all the time, but it is if you only wear it occasionally. It looks like 6.5k NZD converts to around 5220 USD,so your dealer is right in the ballpark. I looked at a couple of reputable sites, and it looks like the prices are running from around 4800-5500 USD for 16710's in very good to excellent condition some with recent services, all had boxes papers, etc. Condition is evertything, recent service history is important unless the dealer is willing to include a service with the watch sale. Boxes and papers nice, not totally essential, but will make it easier to resell later if you should change your mind.The nice thing about buying a preowned one like this, pretty much all the depreciation has been taken, so you could wear it for a few years, and get most or all of your money back if it's still in nice shape. I have a 16750 which is the model right before the 16710. It's absolutely one of my most favorite watches. I went back and looked at the watch on the website link. that one looks to be in mint condition with box, papers, etc. I would think that this is a pretty good deal. also it looks like the dealer handles quite a few high end watches, so they aren't some shyster operation.If iwere in the market for a 16710 and this one came up close by, i would certainly give it a go. Any room for negotiation with these folks, or they really firm on the price? Lots of times if you walk in with cash in hand, dealers will negotiate. Tell them, you really like the watch, but you have 6k to spend., can't hurt to try! Good luck

That's a tough question. like watchmeister said, do you want to wear a Rolex, or are you just as happy with a generic watch. There are some very, very nice generic homage watches out there for 700-1000 USD, and in reality, what you are buying with the TC is a 700 USD base watch. After you add a genuine insert/pearl, maybe a genuuine crystal,crown/tube, you are looking at a 1500 USD watch. For around that you can move up a notch and find a gently used Omega or a new Tag, etc. Another consideraton of a genuine, you are going to get a warranty for some period of time, and if you have a problem, i have found that the small shops will bend over backwards to fix your problem. All of these watches are assembled in Switzerland, inspected upon arrival in the USA, and if there are any problems, they don't get shipped until fixed. I love reps, so don't get me wrong, I just thought a view from the other side would be helpful. Homage watches in that price range, here are 3 of mine 1. MKII homage to the 6538 "bond" Rolex" 2. MKII Stingray homage to the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms 3. Ocean7 LM-7 homage to the Omega Ploprof

I'm more of a vintage fan, but i do have a "P" serial 16610. Like you, I'm pretty put off by the prices that Rolex Services Centers charge. i would probably send mine to a Rolex certified watchmaker rather than a RSC, but that's a moot point in your case. As far as a replacement for everyday wear, the modern superlumed sub is pretty nice. I may be wrong, but i believe i read that there is one available now by TC (I believe) that is supposedly the same sub that WM9 was working on a couple of years back. That's a long story for another day, but I would do a bit of research on this forum and decide what you want. I would say that the big tell is going to be the bezel insert, so a new genuine insert and pearl would make it look a lot better. later on if you want to do more, you can replace the crown, tube and crystal. Get it waterproofed and you're good to go.

Great eye! I probably wouldn't have noticed it in a million years from a photo, but in the flesh, it will definitely be noticable. As one said, at 1-2K, maybe a pass, but for 6k, it should be perfect. It really is a stunning watch, and fixing that little problem, will make it better than best!.

Pretty amazing. Obviously he is one of the real spokespersons for vintage Rolex. It's amazing what he has in his collection now, and just imagine the number of wonderful high end Rolex watches that have passed through his hands over the years. Thanks for posting the link.

I believe that you are doing the right thing to stay away from the cartel 6538's to mod. I bought one off another member a year or so ago, and tried to mod it, but the bezel, crystal construction is way off anything like the original. Most folks who went that route ended up gluing the crystal in.I finally decided to cut my losses and give up on the project. If i were you before I embarked on a high dollar project, i would do a lot of reading and research. Theree are a lot of pitfalls and dead ends when it comes to modding, and you need to try to avoid as many as possible. Contrary to a genuine Rolex sub, where all the genuiine parts fit, and you could build a watch from scratch using parts only, reps are different. Quite often things look OK, but when you try to put things together they don't fit, at least with out modifications. devilva has some really good advice about the costs. When you get into the really high priced super frankens (I would say anything from 3500-4500 USD, you better love the watch! If you decide later on to sell it, for whatever reason, you will take a big hit. Go back to the sales forum and search out some of the big price reps, DRSD's Daytonas, 6538's etc. What you will see is most of them spend a lot of time on the sales forum, either don't sell, sell at a big discount, or the owner decides to part them out.I don't know what the breakover point is, but I would say that for the vast majority of our members, anything over 1k is going to have to be really, really rare and exceptional, or something a member has been looking for for a long time to get sold quickly.

Great work!! Your vintage dial really sets it off. That's the problem with almost every one of our vintage reps, they just look too new. Even a 40 year old "Safe queen" is going to have some vintage changes. Very innovative using the springbar tube for your "temp" tube.

Anyone ? Please shoot me a PM if you are anyone you know might be able to help me with this project. Thanks

Having looked at and lusted over the beautiful 6542 examples that some of you good folks have constructed lately, I would very much like to get my hands on one. I looked at the Puretime models when they came out and the wonky rehault was a no no. I just can't afford a prebuilt one from the Vietnam builder or phong. looking at 3500-4500 USD is a little out of my price range. MKII watches is planning a homage to the 6542, but at the rate they turn out watches, I might not live long enough to get one!! My question is are there any watch modders/ watchsmiths here who could build one for me, possibly using the puretime case, etc and possibly either an acrylic/plastic bezel insert. Not particular about the movement, but the one that folks are getting from Ofrei seems to be a good choice for this model. i believe it's a slow beat (21 thousand vs 28 thousand for the 2836) I have seen several beautiful 6542's here. I would be more than happy to pay for the parts and labor to have someone assemble one for me if possible. Watch building/ modding far exceeds my skill set.

My wife likes the diamond Nexus rings,earrings, etc. She travels quite a bit, and she is uncomfortable wearing her "good" stuff. I can't blame her, it's a real hassle trying to keep up with expensive jewelry, considering that some hotels don't have inroom safes, or she is traveling in unfamiliar areas. Diamond Nexus are not cheap, but like better than diamonds, they have some really good sales which makes it fairly reasonable. all of their settings are 14k White or Yellow gold, and they have a lifetime guarantee on the stones covers loss, clouding, cracking,etc. Unless you use a diamond tester, you can''t tell them from the real deal.

Amazing, it looks like it's probably 15-20 miles away. my wife and I were in Denali NP for several days back in the early 90's when we made our Rover trip from Halifax NS to Anchorage AK. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there. we took the school bus tour back to the Eielson Visitor Center, around 66 miles into the park, (Felt like 200 on that school bus!!) lucky for us McKinley was "out" and I got some great photos. It looked like the mountains were right there, but I asked one of the park rangers how far we were from Mt McKinley, and he said we were over 30 miles from the base. Incredible beauty. I would love to visit again, but I sure ain't driving a Land Rover Series IIa !! Denali should be on everyones bucket list.

Are you looking for a NATO type strap? Lots of folks make them. You can get just about any color you want. Google NATO strap, Maratec, Bond strap,etc. Generic 20mm springbars will work fine.

That is definitely not a 1680 crystal. The cyclops is too far in like a Tudor cyystal . Maybe a 128? End links are wrong , I would bet this is not a Rolex case. The engraving doesn't look like Rolex fonts. Like someone said this is a made from parts watch. He should have put this one on Ebay, rather than the Vintage Rolex Market. There may be some over there who are blowhards, but there are a few that make a living buying/selling and trading vintage Rolex watches. you may fool one of them with some obscure subtle variation, but not a mish mash like this one!!